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Fourth quarter 2017 unemployment drops to 26.7% from 27.7% in third quarter

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Tuesday, 13 February 2018 14:19

BusinessLive reports that SA’s unemployment rate improved in the 2017 fourth quarter from the third, as might be expected for a quarter that usually brings a temporary hiring boost thanks to the holiday season.

Unemployment from September to December was estimated at 26.7%, Statistics SA said in its quarterly labour force survey on Tuesday. That was a whole percentage point better than the 27.7% seen in the July-September quarter. Unemployment in the fourth quarter of 2016 was 26.5%. The number of unemployed people fell to 5.88-million, from 6.21-million in the third quarter, and compared with 5.78-million in the final quarter of 2016. Looking at various economic sectors' performance during the quarter, jobs were lost in the following sectors: Finance and other business services (92,000); Mining (39,000); Trade (25,000); Transport (5,000); and Utilities (4,000). Manufacturing added 13,000 jobs, the highest number added. Construction, and community and social services, added 7,000 jobs each.

Read this report by Tammy Foyn and Sunita Menon in full at BusinessLive